Posts for Category: Website Posts

Last night, Memorial Day night, I was lying between my son and daughter, whispering with them as if a grown up were going to come in and yell at us. We were laughing about a girl who had terrorized the playground all weekend, scandalized the mothers by refusing to get off the “spinner” and let their children have a turn. Dashiell called her the “Sassy Grump” and followed his imagination through scenarios of the Sassy Grump taking over playgrounds all over the city, locking mothers out and extorting money, while my heart trailed off to thoughts of Karen Walsh Rullman.

I remembered her imitating my eighteen month old daughter, dramatizing her diva-­‐ esque hand motion, laughing, and in that moment I saw what a good actress she was, how alive and funny to watch.

I remembered her in the school yard at pick up, talking about a show, trying to get me to meet a friend of her’s, always wanting to put artists together, always that laugh like we’re all in this together, we all know how tough it is, let’s just put on our best face and walk out onto the stage of life.

When our kids were in kindergarten I wrote a musical with them, Karen’s daughter was so cute, like a fairy, eyes like a fawn, brown and gazing mirthfully at everyone, expecting us to break into song and dance at any moment, waiting for it. Karen must have been like that to her. And then after weeks of writing with the children, and them really knowing the songs, the music, Karen came in to the classroom to choreograph. That was the first time I’d ever seen her serious. Because it was a show. And a show was the real deal, you can’t laugh through this, not like life, it has to be, you know, as close to Broadway as you can be on Seventy Eighth Street.

One year Karen and I did Broadway night at the school. She sang, “You’ve got a friend”, and I listened in the wings thinking, ‘She is that friend. She lives these lyrics.’ I went out and sang an original song, feeling uncomfortably self-­‐promoting, and wishing I had sang the duet with her. Later, she sat in a child chair in the first grade classroom talking with her performing partner like she were back stage at a gala. Again, I felt so willowy watching her, admiring the seasoned pro, and yet, I hadn’t a clue that very soon I’d never see her again.

Today, thinking about how to bring up Karen’s death with Dashiell, I asked him what he thought about dying. ‘What do you mean?’ He asked. ‘In the book you’re reading, Magnus Chase, is there stuff about death?’ ‘Yes. If you die bravely with a weapon or a tool in your hand you go to Vanaheim, which is a peaceful paradise with good dinners.’ ‘So death is an extension of life?’ ‘How you live determines how you live after death.’ A few blocks later I told him Karen had died last night and he was startled, hit by real sadness, empathy for his classmate and her brother. No Odin, Gods, afterlife. ‘It’s so sad’, he said, ‘to never see the person you’ve been so close with, you’ve seen every day, again.’

That’s what is so tough about living. Making loss bearable. Breaking into song, into dance, tickling each other late at night in the face of imminent heartbreak, and fear. That’s what was in Karen’s laugh. Memorial Day. We remember our brothers and sisters in arms, and we are all soldiers. But when a family is putting up such a fight, being so brave, exuding spirit and life in the face of such odds, it humbles us. If I were dying, I often thought. If I were dying, I would only be concerned with my children. Whether they were being loved, respected, cared for, treated fairly, empowered to design their lives, and if I felt my children had support, lots of generous support, maybe I could go to Vanaheim in peace.

So, here, I’m putting Karen’s family’s website up so you can read about them and hopefully contribute to their well being in the aftermath of a great mother, artist, and wife’s death.

This stellar night of music will feature Sophie B. Hawkins, along with special guests Run Jenny and Eric Himan. Run Jenny and their music is creating some buzz in the industry with tracks off of Therapy Sessions nominated for the Right OUT Television & Music awards “Best Country” and “Best Rock” and the band nominations for “Best Rock” and “Best New Band” by the CT Music Awards. Eric Himan is regular live guest/featured artist on SiriusXM’s The Coffeehouse and has toured with Ani DiFranco, Leon Russell and has shared the stage with Indigo Girls. This is a night you won’t want to miss, all for a good cause.

When you are about to lose something, someone valuable, that’s when you sacrifice your time, your way of life to hold onto them, that’s when you become really present. When you are about to lose something you love is when you get on your knees and beg.

Maybe that’s the silver lining of Trump becoming president. We are not willing to lose what we love about this country and we are willing to get on our knees for Miss Liberty not to go away. It reminds me of the original Planet Of The Apes when she is washed up on the shore, didn’t that make you cry?

And is it possible that Hillary was too conciliatory, that she didn’t quite embody the voice of the resistance? And the good part about that is, we do. Our bodies carry our message loud and clear. I’ve felt for a long time we look too much to Washington for our progress reports. We on the street are the progressives and we on the street know what we need and how to ask for it.

This big, pink army has to realize how powerful we are now. And how beautiful. If all of us want to help the homeless, feed the hungry, protect children, educate the most under privileged, make sure we can each afford medical care, and create a real green economy, don’t you think we can do it? There are so many of us passionate humanitarians. One would think we have no excuses not to help each other bring this land of ours’ up to it’s highest potential.

Did Moses have this many people? Did Jesus?

Did Martin Luther king?

Did Joan Of Arc?

Does Gloria Steinem?

She should. This big pink army doesn’t need an enemy any more than Donald Trump does. We need tasks. We need focus and positive reinforcement that how we picture this country, because This Land Is Our land, is how we can make it.

Sophie will be performing at the Rubin Museum in New York City in their Naked Soul Series.

Naked Soul presents performances from some of the countryâ€™s top singer/songwriters without microphones or amplifiers, as if the music were, acoustically speaking, naked, viagra uk mastercard. The musicians in the series draw upon the universal themes inherent in Himalayan artâ€”spirituality, peace, tolerance, wisdom, compassion.

Dear friends, I was walking Esther down the street on a hot yesterday and kept stepping into the shade. I’m looking for the shade in every moment, I thought. I’m not drawn to the fiery hot aspect of ideas, people, attractions or emotions. I’m leaning into the cooler, quieter perimeters of observation. Especially in my creative work right now, where there is plenty of heat in the content of what I’m writing, I keep edging into the shady spots.

Why?

Because I don’t want to get burned.

I’m realizing the difference between safe and unsafe, and I don’t even want to be singed, or singe another. I see what is worth risking, and not worth risking. My children are worth risking everything for, and so is my creative work, but neither at the expense of the other.

With my friends, when heated subjects come up, I stray into the leafy coverage of my mind, the protection of the tall buildings surrounding my heart. Dashiell called me “Mellow Fellow” walking home from a sunset the other night, but that’s only on the outside. I am allowing myself to hush, and go down to my streams where new ideas are trickling out of moss covered rock beds. I am letting the waves crash and the fires blaze above me and I’m still going deeper into my shade. I need from myself. I need to find the well. I need the time to drink from my well and fall asleep by it and let my unconscious sprout the words, the phrases, the images that tell the story I’ve been wanting to tell my whole life. It’s not a story about me, it’s a story about a girl like me, a girl I was almost best friends with, but she scared me and I ran away from her. That’s what I’m doing.

My neighbor said of his new born daughter, “she has nothing but time.” I’ve remembered that moment for years, because I thought, “So do we all, nothing but time to grow until we die.” But it doesn’t seem logical, it feels like we are running out of time, but even if we are, it’s still all we have, because when it’s gone, we’re done. So time to choose, as I just did, to go out with my children on the paddle board, instead of write. Time to sleep inside, or as I did last night, to trade sleep for watching the ever changing canopy of our solar system wrapped in dewey blankets with my son.

Time to go to the sunset, as we say, to stand on the edge of our day and watch the earth under our feet literally turn away from the sun. Dashiell said, what if the sun burns out? We die. And when I lay next to him trying to figure out how to tell East from West by the stars, I imagined what if this night were the last time we saw the sun? It was a scary feeling, so when I woke up in the grey blue mist of dawn I felt overjoyed. I felt relief and sweet giddiness that we turned toward our sun again, and I wondered if that appreciation is what many people used to feel, when we were more connected to our natural world, and what now only some people feel, when they’ve escaped death or transcended the pain of being alive. What we do with our time can balance us as we grow, or plummet us into neurosis. And what we do has to change, as we change, as our environment changes. I need, I wrote, from myself more than anyone. Yet my children need from me, probably more than anyone. My daughter especially, my son less and less, but still. What a balance, it reminds me of a Chinese acrobat we watched at the Public Library last night, so much energy was used to balance the parts of herself that she appeared inhumanly calm. I appear that way, I’ve been told, but it’s more the awareness of not wanting to hold precious time over the flame, and burn it up. I have had great shows, particularly in this last year. I feel it’s because of the new material, how I’ve grown into the new songs that tell a new story in new ways, and also my appreciation of you who come to listen. It’s like I woke up in the grey blue mist and there you were, the sun.

I do have the new cycle of songs ready to release, and that means I have to reach out and find ways to deliver them to you and other people who are curious. I love the recordings. You’ll hear more about this soon. I feel I have reached a certain status. The status of a strong, tall tree. My branches reach up to heaven with equal strength to my roots, bearing down into the dirt. I hope I see you soon, all we have is time to grow.